TS 1893 
.R5 
Copy 1 




From the 



Forest 






To the 




Foot, p 

■ rr 



llustrated by 

H. C. BROWN 



1%^.--. 



/^Ct'^My^^i^ 



FROM THE FOREST 
TO THE FOOT 




BOSTON 

DRYSIDE PRESS 

MDCCCXC 



jO^Mh 



<-- 



COPYRIGHT, 1890 
BY G. L; RICHARDS 



9,*' 
-<<^ 




DOWN THE AMAZON TO PARA. 



FROM THE FOREST TO THE FOOT. 



G 



OD bless the man who invented sleep!" 
exclaims Don Quixote's faithful but 
drowsy servitor, and it is easy to imagine any man 
w^ho reaches shelter from the shifts and rigors of 
our Northern winter breathing with no less de- 
voutness: ''God bless the man who invented rub- 
ber, and especially rubber shoes ! " Strictly speak- 
ing, rubber was not invented, of course, being a 
natural product, but in those qualities which multi- 
ply its serviceableness to man it owes as much, 
if not more, to human genius than to Nature. 
Let us imagine that the first snow of the winter 

3 




t 



has fallen and that the reader 
has struggled homeward on 
a dark night through three 
or four inches of slush, the 
brownish-gray mixture into 
which first snow so often 
transforms itself. Being a 
prudent man and, as such, 
provided with ''rubbers," he 
reaches his household dry- 
shod and in a temper to en- 
joy the evening indoors. 
Curtains are drawn and a 

chair is placed within the zone of warmth diffused 
by a fire of crackling logs, hickory or maple, which 
he, with the consciousness of doing one thing 
1 superlatively well, has built him- 
I self. Suppose, then, that he 
should give a thought to that 
' pair of rubber shoes which has 
been of so much service to him. 
His thought takes him much 
further afield, and into more 
varied scenes, than a hasty ob- 
server would believe, and, bit by 
bit, he finds the story of the dis- 
covery of rubber and the utiliza- 

4 





tion of it for man*s benefit unfolding itself with 
more interest than the novel lying" unread in his 
lap. As in a panorama, pict- ,^. 
ure after picture grows be- ^ 
fore him, now in tropical 
groves and by the slug- 
gish flow of Brazilian 
rivers, now of dark labo- 
ratories, in the vapor of 
which weary inventors are 
struggling to entice from 
Nature some secret which 
she refuses to reveal ; now in enormous factories 
in which, with marvelous rapidity and by the most 

perfect processes, a vegetable 
exudation is converted into 
the most indispensable article 
of civilized clothing. He 
sees, too, in all its pathos of 
inalienable purpose, unswerv- 
ing endeavor and unceasing 
toil, the life of the man 
who, by unparalleled perse- 
verance, at last compelled 
Nature to give up that which 
had so long been hidden in 
" her bosom. 





THE DISCOVERY OF RUBBER. 



THE existence of rubber and a knowledge of 
its peculiar and useful properties must have 
been known to the Mexican Indians many years 
before its discovery by the whites. The first men- 
tion of it was made by Herrara in his account of 
the second voyage of Columbus, wherein he 
. " ". speaks of a ball used 

by the Indians made 
from the gum of a 
tree, which was light- 
er and bounced bet- 
ter than the far-famed 
wind balls of Castile. 
Torquemada, writing 
half a century later, 
also speaks of rub- 
ber, which he found 
used by the natives as 
a remedial agent in 




*i*'*"**if: 




V"-- 



cases of hemorrhages and similar diseases. Mixed 
and drunk with cocoa, it made an excellent healing 
emollient for the lungs, and .../*. ^ ., -.^ 

applied externally it possessed 
properties of special value in 
removing tightness of the 
chest. So, at its earliest intro- 
duction, we find rubber admin- 
istering to the wants of man, 
both in his idle moments and 
when he sought relief from 
suffering. 

The first accurate informa- 
tion regarding this wonderful 
plant was furnished by La 
Condamine, a French scientist 
who was sent in 1735 ^^Y his Government to 
measure an arc of the meridian near Quito. This 
brought him to the heart of the rubber-growing 
section, and much valuable information 
was the result. Nevertheless, rubber 
; remained practically unknown, except 
' as a curiosity, for many years after, and 
it was near the close of the eighteenth 
century when Dr. Priestly, in a preface 
to his work on Perspective, called pub- 
lic attention to it as **a novelty for 

7 



■mr X 







erasing pencil marks," stating that "it is sold in 
conical pieces of half an inch for three shillings 
each." For this purpose it was imported into Eng- 
land, but it found no particular sphere of useful- 
ness, beyond the modest requirements of artists, till 
about 1820, nearly three hundred years after its 
first introduction to civilization. The successful 
manufacture of surgical instruments was then ac- 
complished, and a suspicion of the wonderful ca- 
pacities of this strange, new product began to 
suggest itself, and the world of commerce awoke 
to the fact that a new force had entered the 
industrial field, that was destined to play an im- 
portant part in the arts and manufactures of the 
nineteenth century. 




««||W«l^|0HMMaMMMWr- -mHIM 






t»^ 




DISCOVERY OF VULCANIZINC;. 



fl 



Ar this point the inventor eomes on the seene 
— ^to whom reference has ah'eady been 
made — Charles Goodyear. Various attempts 
had l)een made to use rubber for clothing, for 
shoes, coats and liats, but they had not been suc- 
cessful. Daniel Webster used to tell of a rubber 

cloak and hat which a New 
York friend had sent to him 
at Marshfield. He took the 
cloak to the piazza one cool 
morning, when it instantly 
became as rigid as sheet iron. 
Finding that it stood alone, 
he placed his hat upon it and' 
left the articles standing near 
the front door. Several of 
his neighbors who passed, seeing a dark and 
portly figure there, took it, as Mr. James Parton 

9 




tells in an excellent storv, for the lord of the 
mansion and respectfully saluted it. But the 
things that became as inflexible as ice with cold 
chano^ed with heat to the consistency of molasses. 
When, at the advent of winter, you went to look 
for the shoes that you had put away in the 
spring, all you could find was a shapeless lump of 
something which resembled pitch. Some deco- 
rous gentlemen among us, 
adds Mr. Part on, can re- 
member that in the noctur- 
nal combats of their college 
days a flinty rubber shoe in 
cold weather })roved highly 
efficacious as a weapon. 

How could tliis material, 
which j)romised s(j much 
through its waterproof qual- 
ity, be combined with ingredients that would pre- 
vent it from hardenino; with the cold or soften- 
ing with the heat? That was the question which 
Charles Goodyear set himself to solve, the question 
that confronted him with the wolf of starvation, the 
taunts of friends and the bitterest disappointment 
at the moment when his ear seemed to catch the 
long-deferred answer. When the answer eventu- 
ally came, Goodyear told of his struggles in a 

lO 




book made of rubber — a volume of six hundred 
and twenty pages, with eovers of rubber and 
pages of rubber, no other material about it, inside 
or out, than rubber, which changed neither with 
heat nor cold, and possessed all the properties 
which had hitherto been wanting. It cost him 
two millions of dollars to learn the secret, and the 
annals of invention contain no m-eater instance of 
heroic dev^otion and unfaltering hope than is 
afforded in the man\' links in the chain of experi- 
ments by which he finallv triumphed. As he 
failed again and again, his friends forsook him; he 
was imprisoned for debt, and within the walls of 
the prison still continued his experiments. Often 
the secret seemed to be within his grasp, but 
as lie reached for it, it would evade him. Once 
it occurred to him that perhaps it was the turpen- 
tine used in dissolving the gUm or the lampblack 
employed to color it that spoiled 
his product. He esteemed it a rare 
piece of luck to procure some of the 
sap not smoked and still liquid. On 
going to the shed W' here the precious 
sap was deposited, he was accosted 
bv an Irishman in his employ, who 
in hio"h u'lee informed him that he 
had discovered the secret, pointing 

:. 1 




seat and his legs stuck together. 



^rv 



to his overalls, which he had dipped into the sap 
and which were nicely coated with firm India rub- 
ber. For a moment he thought that Jerry might 
have blundered into the secret. The man, how- 
ever, sat down on a barrel near the fire, and, on 
attempting to rise, found himself glued to his 

He had to be 
cut out of his overalls. 

It was an accident at last 
that opened the way to dis- 
covery of the process of vul- 
canization for which Good- 
year was seeking. At Wo- 
burn one day, in the spring 
of 1839, he was standing 
'" with his brother and several 

other persons near a very 
hot stove. He held in his hand a mass of his 
compound of sulphur and gum, upon which he was 
expatiating in his usual vehement manner — the 
company exhibiting the indifference to which he 
was accustomed. In the crisis of his argument 
he made a violent gesture wiiich brought the 
mass in contact with the stove, which was hot 
enough to melt India rubber instantly ; upon 
looking at it a moment after, he perceived that 
his compound had not melted in the least degree! 

12 




It had charred as leather chars, but no part of the 
surface had dissolved. There was not a sticky 
place upon it. To say that he was astonished at 
this would but faintly express his ecstasy of 
amazement. The result was absolutely new to 
all experience — India rubber not melting in con- 
tact with red-hot iron ! He felt as Columbus felt 
when he saw the land bird alighting upon his ship 
and the driftwood floating by. In a few years 
more his labors were crowned with success. In 
the words of Mr. Parton, who has kindly placed 
his researches at our disposal, 
Goodyear gave to the arts not 
a new material merely, but a new 
class of materials, applicable to 
a thousand diverse uses. His 
product had more than the elas- 
ticity of India rubber, while it 
was divested of all those proper- 
ties which had lessened its utility. j^ui^ber biscuit. 
It was still India rubber, but its surfaces would 
not adhere, nor would it harden at any degree 
of cold nor soften at any degree of heat. It 
was a cloth impervious to water. It was 
paper that would not tear. It was parchment 
that would not crease. It was leather which 
neither rain nor sun would injure. It was ebony 




that could be run into a mold. It was ivory that 
could be worked like wax. It was wood that never 
cracked, shrunk, nor decayed. It was metal, 
''elastic metal," as Daniel Webster termed it, that 
could be wound round the finger or tied into a 
knot, and w^hich preserves its elasticity 
almost like steel. Trifling variations 
in the ingredients, in the pro- 
portions and in the heating 
made it either as pliable as kid, tougher than ox 
hide, as elastic as whalebone or as rigid as flint. 
The increase in the value of the crude material and 
the importation of it can w^ell be imagined. 





H 




GROTESQUE FORMS IN WHICH RUBBER 
SOMETIMES COMES. 



THE HOME OE 
THE RUBBER GATHERER. 

THE scenes that surround the home of the 
rubber gatherer on the Amazon are weird 
in the extreme. Think of a forest whose silence 
is unbroken by the voice of man, where even the 
sunshine refuses to penetrate, and all is dark, 
gloomy and foreboding. Fierce jaguars, deadly 
serpents, birds of brilliant plumage and the rub- 
ber 2fatherer are the sole tenants. In a small, 
thatched hut, built on piles — for his rude cabin 
nearly always stands in the water — is the dwell- 
ing place of the half Indian, half negro who taps 
the rubber tree. Close by is the rubber grove, and 
thither the worker wends his way at daybreak to 
gather the precious gum. With a small, sharp 
instrument, somewhat resembling a hatchet, an 



incision is made in the tree and a diminutive 
earthenware cup is placed below it to catch the 
flow. In many respects the .^"x \ ... 

operation is akin to the gath- 
ering of maple-sap in New 
England. The sap from — 
the rubber tree flows intOc 
the cup and at night the 
entire yield is gathered 
into one huge earthen- 
ware jug or calabash and 
brought to the huts. ' 5 
Some trees yield from ten to 
thirty cups, and one worker 
may attend from one hundred 
and ten to one hundred and forty trees, so that 
a day's work is apt to be highly remunerative. 
' The contents of the calabash now resembles a 
huge pan of milk, and to make from 
this the crude rubber requires a 
skillful and peculiar manipulation, 
/preparations for which have been 
going on meanwhile. 

A smoldering fire of palm nuts 
is ready, the smoke from which 
transforms the gum into crude 
rubber. To concentrate this 





10 



"* .^sfi^ ^^^^'^^ 




smoke a jug-shaped earthenware vessel, con- 
structed to answer the purpose of a chimney, is 
placed over the fire, and through the orifice pours 

the dense smoke caused by 
the burning palm nuts. 

Fancy a man sitting in a 

small hut, with no ventila- 

S^^ 01^ ^ tion, and this thick, heavy 

'^m. TMJJr ; smoke fining the atmosphere! 

y A white man would suffocate 
in a few moments, but the 
rubber smoker goes on, oblivious to his surround- 
ing discomforts. He now takes an implement 
much resembling a long-handled wooden spade, 
the blade being round instead of square. Dip- 
ping this in the gum, he holds it over the smoke 
till the discoloration is complete ; he then repeats 
this operation again and again till the requisite 
thickness is obtained. When 
sufficiently thick, the mass is * 
cut from the mold and sold to 
traders, who take it down the 
river in small boats and ca- 
noes. From whatever cause, 
the rubber thus prepared is 
the finest in the world. Rub- 
ber is grown in Africa, Asia, 

17 






'■^ t. 




o".\ iK 



JL. 






>'PAddW ^c. 




Assam, India, Singapore, Central 
and South America, but only on the 
Upper Amazon is the finest grade 
of rubber produced. 

Down the stream go the lumps of 
crude rubber or biscuits, as they are 
called, and they finally reach Para, the 
chief city on the Amazon. 
Para is the great rubber city of the 
world. It is also the headquarters for all goods 
coming and going on the Upper Amazon. It is 
a quaint half Portuguese, half Brazilian 
town, with long rows of low, 
flat, white houses, with red 
roofs, and derives its 
chief importance from 
its connection with the 
rubber groves. Its so- 
ciety is strictly divid- 
ed into two classes — 
the merchants and the 
natives. Most of the 
merchants are Portu- 
guese, English or 
American. They en- 
tertain with characteristic Southern hospitality, 
and do what thcv can to reduce tlie friction of 

18 





business to the minimum. 

During the heat of the day 

the merchant retires to his 

home in the suburbs and 

takes a short siesta. At 

four o'clock he returns to 

business, the heat being on 

i the dechne. There is none 

of that bustle common to 

American cities, and matters 

move alone in a humdrum sort of a wav that 

would simplv torture the active Yankee. 

Leaving Para, the rul^ber is soon on its way 
to New York, where swift-sailing steamers quickly 
land it, and now begin the operations that trans- 
form raw rubber into rubber boots and shoes. 




19 




n II' 



Factory no. t, boston rubber shoe co. 



PROGRESS. 



IF Charles Goodyear were alive to-day he could 
discover nothing connected with his invention 
in which so great an improvement has been made 
as in the manufacture of rubber shoes of the best 
quality. In shape, durability, and comfort there 
is no comparison between those experimented on 
by him and those which are now shipped to every 
city, town and village in the United States and 
to all parts of the world by the Boston Rubber 
Shoe Company. The most dainty Parisian fash- 
ions in footwear are reproduced in rubber with 
such perfection that the material has the appear- 
ance of the finest patent leather. 



20 



" How many styles do you make ?" the writer 
of this souvenir had occasion to ask one of the 
officials of the Boston Rubber Shoe Company, 
and, to his amazement, the reply was, ''Over one 
thousand styles and widths." 

"How many pairs a day ? " 

*'Oh, about forty-five thousand." 

Forty-five thousand pairs a day ! 

Nine million pairs a year! 

A hurried calculation shows that if this number 
of shoes were put toe to heel they would reach 
from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. 

Packed in cases, each one foot deep, they 
would cover thirty acres — would make seven 
Bunker Hill Monuments, and would fill 900 
freight cars. 

The Boston Rubber Shoe Com pan v is the great- 
est producer of rubber 
boots and shoes in the 
world, and our con- 
templative friend who 
sits before his fire must '^ 
visit, in his mind's eye, ' 
at least, such an estab- 
lishment before his ' - 
panorama is complete. 
He has seen the early 




Ai>o 



21 




I 



voyageurs pondering over the gum for which the 
savage found so many uses ; he has had a ghmpse 
^ ■ of Goodyear's persistent toils, and of the 
transportation of the rubber down 
the Amazon and on the Atlantic. 
The last scene is in New EnHand, 
on the edge of Middlesex Fells, 
and in a grouj) of factories which 
in extent and equipment are with- 
out rivals. 

The making of a rubber 
shoe is not the commonplace 
affair that might be supposed. 
It takes "nine men to make 
'' 'a pin," they say, 

but to make a rub- 
ber shoe it requires many more. 
There are washers, grinders, sheeters, 
cutters, makers, varnishers, vulcan- 
izers, strippers, inspectors, packers 
and shippers engaged on every pair 
of shoes manufactured ! 

The crude rubber goes first into 
the hands of the grinder, who places 
the huge leathery biscuits in the jaws 
of ponderous cylinders that quickly 
grind them up. It comes out, no 





23 



longer in balls, but in huge lumpy sheets, like the 
unwashed fleece of a sheep. These sheets go to 
the drying room to remain about a month, only to 
be again run through huge steel rollers, from 




FIKST PROCESS. — GRINDING CRUDE RUBBER. 



which they come out much thinner and smoother. 
They are then run through a set of rollers 
together with a web of cloth, making the rubber 
fabric from which boots and shoes are constructed. 

24 



The cutter takes the sheets of rubber cloth and 
with tin patterns cuts out the various pieces 
for the different styles of boots and shoes. 

The makers next take the different pieces and 
put them together, forming the boot or shoe over 
wooden lasts, without a stitch or a tack, as all 




CUTTERS AT WORK 



the overlapping edges are adhesive and, when 
once rolled down firmly with a hand-roller to force 
out the bubbles of air which might cause a blister 
later on, they are taken to the varnishers, who, 
surrounding a small, square table with a large 
pan in the centre, dip their brushes into the 

25 




pan and apply a coat- 
ing to the shoes. 

Placed on iron cars, 
they are propelled 
along an iron track 
into a huge oven, 
where the temperature 
is about 300°. A 
confinement of many 
hours is required to accomplish the vulcanizing 
process, which is the most delicate and trouble- 
some process of all, for if the temperature should 
reach a few degrees too high or fall a few degrees 
too low, on a single "batch," thousands of dollars 
worth of rubber boots and shoes would be ren- 
dered practically worthless. The goods are next 



VARNISH ERS. 




PACKING ROOM. 




sent to the inspectors, 
packers and shippers, 
to reappear later in a 
tempting array in the 
local shoe stores in 
every part of the Uni- 
ted States. 

This is only a hur- 
ried and brief sketch of 
the various operations 
which at every stage 
require skilled labor, sagacious supervision and 
the use of the highest grade of material. There 
are rubber shoes and rubber shoes, of course, but 
the rubber shoe that looks 
well and wears well is the 
result of not only the most 
conscientious labor and long 
experience, but of the in- 
vestment of enormous cap- ^ 
ital. Such a shoe is that '' 
of the Boston Rubber Shoe v 
(yompany ! 

No other rubber company 
in the world has the connec- 
tions and influence in securing the highest quality 
of raw material, the facilities and capacity for 

28 




.i?^"^ 




manufacturing it and the confidence of the pubHc 
in buying the finished product that the Boston 
Rubber Shoe Company has earn- 
ed and estabHshed in the thirty- 
seven years that it has devoted 
to developing this industry; so 
when you buy a pair of rubber 
boots or overshoes insist upon 
having those with this stamp on the bottom, for 
they are the best that can be made. 

In the group of factories owned by that Com- 
pany many things are combined to secure preem- 
inence. The buildings themselves were built 
solely for the purpose for which they are now 
used. The arrangements of light, heat and 
ventilation — all important factors in a busi- 
ness of this kind — are perfect. Everything per- 




FACTORY NO. 2, BOSTON RUBBER SHOE CO. 




taining to the manu- 
facture of a rubber 
shoe is carried on un- 
der the Company's 
own roofs. Even the 
dyeing of the cloth 
Hnings, an apparently 
insignificant item, is 
so large with it that 



all 



it dyes 
goods on 
premises, 
trains run 



Its own 
its own 
Railroad 
into its 



own yards, and every facility is offered for the 
quick handling of what is undoubtedly the largest 
business of its kind in the world. This p^reat 
concern manufactures nearly forty-live thousand 
pairs of boots and shoes per day, as we have said, 
which means that the product of a single week's 
work of its factories would be sufficient to shoe 
an army three times greater than Grant's at Shiloh 
— and that would take three days to pass a given 
point, marching two abreast. More than three 
thousand persons find employment there and 
receive every consideration to which conscien- 
tious employees are entitled. A library has been 
organized, in which helpful and interesting books 



;o 



abound, a librarian selected from among them- 
selves being in charge. A savings bank is pro- 
vided, and habits of thrift greatly encouraged 
thereby. Neat little cottages are also owned by 
the Company, and these are rented at reasonable 
prices to the men with families. 

Our friend of the fireside wakes up from his 
revery and finds a member of the family at his 
side. 

'' What are you dreaming about ?" the new- 
comer inquires. 

*' A pair of rubber shoes," is the answer. 

*' A pair of rubber shoes ! There's not much to 
think about in them." 

''More than you suppose; listen," — and the 
dreamer tells what he has seen '' From the Forest 
to the Foot." 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

018 373 644 9 



